


birds of a feather

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Captain America (Movies), DCU (Animated), DCU (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Avenger Bucky Barnes, BDSM, Dominance, Hair-pulling, Kink, M/M, Playful Sex, Rough Sex, SHIELD, Submission, Violence, morally gray
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:48:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2110503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For this prompt at comment-fic on lj: <i> Jason Todd/+Bucky, trying to be one of the good guys again is tricky</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	birds of a feather

It started a month after Jason became a probationary agent for SHIELD. HYDRA agents had ambushed him and Bucky couldn’t get a clear shot from his position. 

It didn’t matter. Jason had pulled out a knife and single-handedly taken out all four of them. 

Bucky, watching through his scope, had just slightly smiled.

Later, as SHIELD was cleaning up the scene and taking a statement from the agents present, Bucky was answering an agent’s questions just a few feet away from where Agent Triplett was debriefing Todd. Jason responded in short sentences; his breathing patterns were unsteady, and his voice and body language made him seem withdrawn, still a bit on edge.

He was faking it, clear as day.

Clear to Bucky, at least. He looked over to Jason, watched him put on a show: _Please think I suffer for those men I kill, please think I have nightmares about their faces. Please don’t see what I really am._

Jason noticed him staring, of course (men like them knew when they were being watched). He looked back at Bucky and he _knew_. Bucky saw right into him. And from there it wasn’t hard for Jason to see right back.

Past midnight, Jason knocked on the door to Bucky’s apartment. The secret one, that Bucky didn’t let SHEILD trail him to.

“You think you can kill me?” Bucky said, raising an amused eyebrow.

“Not here for that. Well, not tonight,” Jason said, cocking his head, then smirked, sucking a little on his own lower lip.

Bucky paused, then stepped aside to let Jason in the door, the scent of him, sweat and gunpowder, heavy in the air.

\--

Jason showed up once in a while. It was always fast, always good, teeth and muscle and deep guttural moans. Hands roaming, fingers gliding along skin, then gripping, clinging, tighter than they should.

Sometimes it was rough, veering – dangerously – almost into battle, leaving them panting and sweaty and bruised amid broken furniture. Bucky was careful not to go too far, but it was a surprise – a good one, he admitted to himself but not to Todd – to find someone who wasn’t scared to push his buttons.

Sometimes it was smooth, not gentle exactly but not hard either, Jason laughing at his own dumbass jokes as he kissed a line down Bucky’s stomach, as Bucky picked him up and held him as Jason’s legs wrapped around his waist.

Sometimes, Jason asked Bucky to hold him down, to pull him by the hair and press him hard into the carpet until he was covered in rugburns and bruises and scrapes, to fuck him rough and brutal and inescapable. Sometimes, Bucky would say yes and halfway in Jason would start to babble, “Yes, yes, fuck, Bucky, more, yes, nnnnnhhh, yes.” He would always use his original hand to grab Jason’s hair so he could feel the softness of it as he tugged. 

Sometimes Jason would ask for it and Bucky would say no; it wasn’t the kind of day when Bucky could do that. Jason never – not once – asked him for an explanation.

Jason would stay after too sometimes. Jason would nestle up close to Bucky, put heat in his space when Bucky was used to cold. The guy talked a lot, Bucky noticed, snark and bullshit and bravado filling up the silence that had long settled into Bucky’s apartment. It wasn’t so bad, once Bucky got used to it. 

They didn’t talk about how they got there; they weren’t stupid enough to ask for each other’s life stories. And they didn’t talk about things that seemed off limits. (Bucky asked once why they occasionally caught Batman following SHIELD, but Jason seemed more worried about answering questions than the fact that Batman was there, so Bucky figured he’d let it drop. He didn’t trust Batman the way he trusted Steve or even Natasha or Clint or the other Avengers, but he figured Batman wasn’t there to kill them all.)

They invented a code to use in case they needed to talk without SHIELD understanding them. They agreed that it would be a code just for them; there were some things even Bucky’s friends shouldn’t know. 

Sometimes one of them would wake up in the middle of the night. The other one always knew enough to clear the way, to wake up and get the hell away from the bed before some shit went down. No bullshit trying to wake the other guy up, thinking it was okay to touch someone halfway in the waking world and halfway in hell. It wasn’t something that they had to teach each other. They both knew.

It became a pattern eventually, the two of them. One of them might go a couple weeks without speaking to anyone, but the other would just welcome him back when the rough patch was over, as if there were nothing wrong with it. They both had people determined to catch them if they started spiraling down, and they both knew the burden that could be. It was an unspoken rule: if the other guy wants to break, that’s his call. 

It was a relief, a lightened load, to not have to explain this rule.

\--

A few months later, an anti-Captain America domestic terrorist group, who felt that Steve Rogers no longer represented “true” American values, took a shot at Steve. It was at a charity event, and Steve didn’t have a shield, and he took four hollow point bullets in the chest.

Steve’s prognosis was good. He would be cleared to leave the hospital in a day, back in the field in four. The group responsible had gone on television in masks, bragging about their victory over the ‘traitor’ Steve Rogers, promising to finish the job.

Bucky was ordered back to SHIELD custody. They weren’t sure how this event would bear on his mental stability.

“It’s bullshit that you’re stuck here,” Jason said. It was the first time they had met in Jason’s quarters in the SHIELD facility, even though Bucky’s official quarters were a couple floors away; it went without saying that they’d choose privacy if they had the option.

“I wouldn’t kill them,” Bucky said.

“Right,” Jason said, unsure if Bucky were afraid of bugs listening in or if he honestly thought Jason would believe something like that.

“I wouldn’t,” Bucky said, leaning forward. “Steve would think their deaths were on him. He’s kind of a stubborn jackass when it comes to that.”

“I’ve heard he killed plenty,” Jason said.

“In battle. Never assassinations.”

“I never really got the distinction. A threat is a threat.”

“Yeah. But in this case, Steve would know that I killed them. I owe him better than that.”

They never talked about Steve, not really. But Jason wasn’t an idiot. He knew that Bucky would blow up the world before he hurt Steve again.

He wondered if he should feel jealous. 

“So they’re letting me visit him in the hospital. But then later tonight, I’ll be here,” Bucky said. Clearly an invitation.

“I’ll meet you later then.”

“You don’t care if SHIELD knows about us?” Bucky spoke in code now, so only Jason would understand, the code they had developed one night in bed just in case. Bucky did think there would be listeners, then.

Jason grinned. “Who wouldn’t want this ass? If anything, SHIELD’s going to be jealous that you get to tap this.”

“Thanks,” Bucky said. Two hours ago, Bucky was pressing on Steve’s chest, screaming at him to stop bleeding as their white tuxedo shirts soaked red. He didn’t want to be alone tonight, and he knew Jason was perceptive enough to notice.

“I’ll see you later,” Jason said. He smiled at Bucky softly.

\--

Bucky visited Steve in the hospital. They joked like nothing had happened. 

Bucky figured out that it was Steve who ordered Bucky to be taken into temporary custody. Bucky was annoyed, but didn’t say anything. He knew Steve was just trying to protect him from his… lesser instincts.

He got back to his SHIELD quarters and lay on the bed, trying to erase the picture of Steve gasping for air on the sidewalk as blood filled his lungs. (After the serum, after Steve became a powerhouse and didn’t need Bucky, he always thought his compensation was that he’d never again have to hold Steve in his arms, willing him to breathe as he wheezed and shook for lack of air).

He waited for Jason to show up. 

He waited longer.

Deep into the night, he gave up and turned out the light. 

He was surprised that Todd never showed. Bucky usually read people better than that.

\--

Todd showed up two days later with no explanations for SHIELD and certainly none for Bucky. He was given a reprimand and additional training sessions for leaving without permission while on probationary status. 

A day after that, the bodies were found and Jason was put in a cell.

Bucky went to visit. They spoke in the code they had developed, so SHIELD wouldn’t understand. 

“This wasn’t your fight,” Bucky said.

“Your friend can’t feel guilty if some random guy decides to pick off the group that shot him.”

Bucky leaned against the bars. “You didn’t have to do this for me.”

Jason shrugged. He didn’t get off his cot, didn’t get any closer to Bucky. “It felt good. You know what I mean.” He smiled, viciously, and Bucky recognized the threat: Jason would rather talk about how fucked up he is (how fucked up they both are) than actually admit he did it for Bucky. 

“A lot of SHIELD was thrown off by how thorough you were,” Bucky said.

“Very diplomatic. You mean they shit their pants when they saw the blood and gore.”

“Romanov didn’t.”

“I bet.”

“She’s writing a memo. Clint supports it too, and she thinks we can get Stark on board. He’s not SHIELD, but he’s, let’s call it, persistent.”

“A memo? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“She’s saying that your reaction sent an appropriate message to future would-be assassins, and that your primary mistake was going alone instead of requesting permission.”

Jason stood then, walked a little closer to the bars. “So… according to her, it’s not that I’m a complete fucking psycho, it’s that I need to be better at following the rules?” He laughed a little.

“She suggests doubling the length of your probationary period and assigning you to a handler who takes a stronger hand. She thinks your talent at tracking shouldn’t be wasted. Considering that you found them single-handedly before all of SHIELD and the other government agencies could.”

“Are you fucking with me?” Jason said, leaning forward. He looked confused, like forgiveness was the last thing he expected. “I was pretty sure I’d get thrown in one of SHIELD’s permanent pits.”

“I’ll break you out if you are,” Bucky said.

Jason seemed startled. “You don’t--”

“But it doesn’t look like I’ll have to. I mean, sure, most of SHIELD is a lot less blasé about that level of… retribution than Romanov is. But on the other hand, that means a lot of people at SHIELD are terrified of Romanov. You have a good shot.”

“Why do you think she did that?”

Bucky shrugged. He said, “She probably does think putting you away would be a waste of talent. And she’s not scared of you.”

“Is she… you know?” _Like us?_

Bucky frowned. “I don’t think it would be good for our health to pry too much into the mystery that is Natasha Romanov.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Was your friend upset?”

Bucky paused. “Steve’s never happy at deaths. He wanted to know if I asked you to do it.”

“You would never ask me to do that,” Jason said, eyes dark. If there was one line they wouldn’t cross with each other, it was that: they were both walking the tightrope between light and dark, and the rule was, you don’t push the other guy over. You don’t try to save him, you don’t tell him to choose light, but you sure as hell don’t push him toward the dark either. “I’ll tell Rogers if he doesn’t believe you.”

“He believed me. But I told him about… us.”

“Oh. He must not have liked that.” Jason knew that Steve and Bucky weren’t lovers, but Rogers was notoriously protective of his friends. He’d probably hate someone like Jason around his wounded, exploited best friend.

“I told him that you were good for me, and that was that.”

“Really.”

“Really. Kind of guy he is.”

“Oh. Good.” Jason wondered if that were true, if anyone could really be as perfect as Bucky seemed to believe Steve was. But he was grateful, regardless. “So, um… if I ever get out of this cell, who would be my ‘stronger hand’ handler?” Jason asked. He smirked a little, prepared to be unimpressed by the next baby-sitter SHIELD might throw at him.

“Romanov would be your handler,” Bucky said, smiling.

Jason swallowed. “Are you sure it’s not too late to be thrown in a pit?”

Bucky just laughed.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] birds of a feather](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6549367) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins), [storiesfortravellers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers)




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